humourless mummy, cuddly feminist

Some squeaks from a mildly political mouse

Politics has gone all hormonal again, hasn’t it? One minute Tim Yeo’s asking David Cameron whether he’s “man or mouse” – believe it or not, it takes nerves of steel to go back on a pre-election pledge – and the next David’s popping up in the Mail on Sunday to show us all just how hard he is. And he’s really, really fucking hard. Kind of like Ross Kemp with a plummy accent.* Man, there’s so much dick-swinging and testosterone abounding, if I were a more modest woman, I wouldn’t know where to look.

In a moment of almost reckless decisiveness, Cameron has controversially called for “hard work, moral good and no more dumbing down”. As a liberal lefty, I’m obviously outraged. Or rather, I would be but I’m too much of a mouse to get anything more than remotely peeved. Let’s just say I’m squeaking in very mild irritation. But obviously my squeaks will be drowned out by what the Mail terms Cameron’s “roar”.

This is a Government with fighting spirit for our future. Because the Olympics and Paralympics have taught us a valuable lesson: if you have a vision and pursue it with enough rigour and drive, you can achieve it.

Yikes! Evidently Cameron not only talks to the ladies of Glamour, but reads the magazine too, since that particular brand of positive thinking wank comes straight out of Louise Mensch’s column (apart from the inappropriate hijacking of Olympian and Paralympian achievement. Mensch has never been man enough to take the piss that much).

As a non-hard, non-male, wimpy, bleeding-heart, woolly, muesli-eating liberal loser, I am currently cowering in a corner. I don’t like being told that “doing an honest day’s work is a moral good that should be rewarded” or that “graft equals success”. I’m not very good at “rejecting the easy path”.** Basically I don’t like being told to work my arse off by a millionaire because I AM ALREADY REALLY FUCKING TIRED. And I don’t even have one of those really shit low-paid jobs. I have an average-income job. I don’t know who cleans David’s toilet or vacuums his office floor, but I doubt very much that their morality is in question (although their claim to “success” most certainly is). And I am sick of being told that if things feel shit for most of us, it must be because the medicine’s doing us or even the economy any good. This is just a metaphor. Are metaphors the only things we can manufacture now?

Do you know what I think would be really daring? Really fucking hardcore? If David Cameron were to admit that he doesn’t know how much most people struggle and that he never, ever will. And if, instead of blaming workers (too lazy), non-workers (too entitled) and kids (too dumb) for everything that goes wrong, he could actually find a positive vision for Britain which didn’t involve whingeing about some imaginary moral weakness in everyone who doesn’t happen to be of his kind. Wouldn’t that be politically braver? In the absence of a politics that extends beyond the playground, wouldn’t that at least involve him laying his dick on the table for us all to measure? I mean, I’m not saying I’d be impressed. Curious, certainly. And interested in someone actually revealing a piece of themselves for once.

Anyhow, that’s just an idea. I think I’ll now go and curl up behind the living room curtains, and possibly nibble on some cheese.

* Except I sort of like Ross Kemp, because of the way he called out his ex Rebekah Brookes on her homophobia. Cameron would never have had the nerve, or, one assumes, the inclination, to do that.

** For starters, I’d like to know why – if such an easy path exists – we are rejecting it. Because right now, David’s making it sound like he’s just doing that in order to look extra-hard.